Dear Clarice II
THE CHAMBER Where Mason spends his life is quiet, but it has its own soft
pulse, the hiss and sigh of the respirator that finds him breath. It is dark
except for the glow of the big aquarium where an exotic eel turns and turns in
an endless figure eight, its cast shadow moving like a ribbon over the room.
Mason's plaited hair lies in a thick coil on the respirator shell covering his
chest on the elevated bed. A device of tubes, like panpipes, is suspended
before him.
Mason's long tongue slides out from between his teeth. He scrolls his tongue
around the end pipe and puffs with the next pulse of the respirator.
Instantly a voice responds from a speaker on the wall. Yes, sir."
"The Tattler."
The initial t's are lost, but the voice is deep and resonant, a radio voice.
"Page one has-"
"Don't read to me. Put it up on the elmo."
The d end m and the p are lost from Mason's speech.
The large screen of an elevated monitor crackles. Its blue-green glow goes
pink as the red masthead of they Tattler appears.
"DEATH ANGEL: CLARICE STARLING, THE FBI's KILLING MACHINE," Mason reads,
through three slow breaths of his respirator. He can zoom on the Pictures.
Only one of his arms is out from under the covers of his bed. He has some
movement in the hand. Like a pale spider crab the hand moves, more by the
motion of the fingers than the power of his wasted arm. Since Mason cannot
turn his head much to see, the index and middle fingers feel ahead like
antennae as the thumb ring and little fingers scuttle the hand along. It finds
the remote, where he can zoom and turn the pages.
Mason reads slowly. The goggle over his single eye makes a tiny hiss twice a
minute as it sprays moisture on his lidless eyeball, and often fogs the lens.
It takes him twenty minutes to get through the main article and the sidebar.
"Put up the X ray," he said when he had finished.
It took a moment. The large sheet of X-ray film required a light table to show
up well on the monitor; here was a human hand, apparently damaged. Here was
another exposure, showing the hand and the entire arm. A pointer pasted on the
X ray showed an old fracture in the humerus about halfway between the elbow
and the shoulder.
Mason looked at it through many breaths. "Put up the letter," he said at last.
Fine copperplate appeared on the screen, the ban ;y writing absurdly large in
magnification.
Dear Clarice, Mason read, I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your
disgrace and public shaming.
. . . The very rhythm of the voice excited in him old thoughts that spun him,
spun his bed, spun his room, tore the scabs off his unspeakable dreams, raced
his heart ahead of his breath. The machine sensed his excitement and filled
his lungs ever faster.
He read it all, at his painful rate, reading over the moving machine, like
reading on horseback.
Mason could not close his eye, but when he had finished reading, his mind went
away from behind his eye for a while to think. The breathing machine slowed
down. Then he puffed on his pipe.
"Yes, sir."
"Punch up Congressman Vellmore. Bring me the headphone. Turn off the
speakerphone.
"Clarice Starling," he said to himself with the next breath the machine
permitted him. The name has no plosive sounds and he managed it very well.
None of the sounds was lost. While he waited for the telephone, he dozed a
moment, the shadow of the eel crawling over his sheet and his face and his
coiled hair.